Today, my daughter and I visited the House of the Binns. Its quite an odd name, but is the ancestral home of the Dalyell Baronets, and lies close to the town of Falkirk in central Scotland.
We have actually wanted to visit for sometime, but you can only do it by tour. The tour numbers are small, was about 12 people on our tour, and it was also closed to tours for a long time. So we were quite delighted when we found out we could get onto one of the tours today.
The house is set in quite a large set of grounds, and on entering the property we were greeted by these sheep that were happily lying right be side the drive that leads up to the house.
The house is 400 years old. The semi-circle above the top window in the pic above states the year 1621 - although, over that time the building has changed and been added onto quite a lot.
The tour takes you around the inside of the building, but sadly, you are not allowed to take photos inside. Although its a National Trust property (gifted to the Nat Trust just after the second world war by the Dalyell family), the family still live in the building and you are not allowed to take photos for insurance purposes ! I assume that its because there are so many valuable objects there, that they are worried that if pics are taken and put all over the internet then it will lead to them getting stolen !
So you ae going to have to take me at my word when I say that the tour was fantastic and it looked stunning inside. Although the family were clearly wealthy, it also looked really homely. The rooms we saw were laid out like they would have been spanning from the 16th century up and into the middle of the 20th century. So there was a real mix of styles, and it was stunning.
The tour guide was extremely knowledgeable and had loads of stories to tell about the family. From the original Baronet being a close friend of royalty including Charles the second, all the way up to one of the recent Baronets (although I dont think he took the title), Tam Dalyell, who I remember being a Member of Parliament for the UK government. It really was interesting.
The tour lasted an hour after which we were free to visit the grounds. The name Binns comes from an old scottish word for hill (binn to ben, etc). So it really means House of the Hills.
The position certainly is elevated (but not massively), and here you can see it gives great views down to the Firth of Forth. Its hard to make out, but thats Blackness Castle down at the waters edge in the middle of the pic. Allegedly there was an escape tunnel that led from the House all the way to the Castle.
The tower above sits on the high point just by the house. The story goes that one of the Baronets built it for a bet, just to make the next neighboring estate (Hopetoun House) angry, because it would be the first thing they would see each day when they got up !
And the pic above is of another little folly on the property - said to be the first baronets smoking hut.
Anyway, I'm so glad we finally got to go on the tour. It was well worth the wait, and I'd absolutely go again - it really was that good. I'd totally recommend this to anyone in the area, although it is difficult to get a spot on a tour (advance booking is needed).